Vaudeville & Vixens is open for business.

Last night, at the theater's gala, we opened Vaudeville & Vixens for a sold out house and it looks like it's a rousing success! The audience howled and laughed through the whole thing. We did a bit, at the beginning, where I taught the audience to yell "Whoopee!" and "Yee haw" at the girls, if they liked the striptease and they ate that up! The audience yelled "Whoopee" at every sexy girl that they saw, which made the show that much better. Incredible enough, the audience bought EVERY box of candy that our candy butcher had to sell and we made an additional $50 off the audience, which was hilarious. (I didn't think that would happen.)

Backstage, we managed to get almost every prop onstage, the only one that didn't make it was one that actually fell off a table and broke, so that was okay. I got the only injury of the night, when I rolled incorrectly off a chair and got a nice raspberry on my right knee for my efforts.

Afterwards, the audience stuck around and met the actors and raffled off auction prizes. As a reward for helping with cleanup from the Gala, the actors were fed pizza and we bought a TON of booze, and some of us stuck around at the theater, dancing the night away, until 4am.

I talked to the Artistic Director, John, about this show and he says that it's a big step forward for the company. They've never done anything like this before. There's talk of a remount for next year (which will be easier for everyone, now that they know what it's like to do the show). We're also in vague discussions about doing The Marx Brothers play "The Coconuts" as part of their regular season. I'm levying to get the part of Groucho Marx. That would be an AMAZING experience.

But first, we've got three more weeks of this sexy, delightful, playful show to run, before we decide anything about NEXT season. Currently, they've sold 40% of the available seats for the rest of the run, BEFORE THE SHOW EVEN OPENED!

Oh, and we've got seven different reviewers coming to see the show tonight, which is a little bit daunting. All in all, I think that they'll really like the show. (I'm personally a little bit nervous, because this is the first show that's been reviewed, where I'm very much front and center of the show. So, a stink-ass show can certainly be blamed on me. If we all got rest and plenty of water today and show up, not hung-over, then we might just get some crackerjack reviews. That's my plan, anyways.) Additionally, there's a nice little article about the show up here at Evanston Now. Check it out!

Cheers,
Mr.B


Leeann Zahrt and I in "The Doctor Sketch!"